Of Luminous
my dear dead friend my euphoric interior moon is it possible your red streamers emit not a shred of observable light we stand still in your path we waver entangled in seeds of burning branches parallel syntax unerring alliteration flaming where not even a vowel is consumed you have for question I am what for obituary I am irretrievable you have arms legs throat breast hands we wash orifices we cleanse eyes and jaw tied shut with strips of clean cotton cloth you fell out of orbit the oceans boiled I hid inside the glare of all mirrors such is the delineation of what is lacking where I went blind
Of Innocence
daughter help me scare birds from the corn come pull weeds harvest fruit spread dung thresh and gather sheaves daughter build a sleeping nest hurry aren’t we called allmothers aren’t our children like elephant calves born blind too weak to be counted you could disappear at any time was your mind born blank daughter tabula rasa come help me file tax forms health insurance applications loan applications refugee status attestations hurry pry open the leaded doors child come purify the air why fill with bitterness the fleeting early days of childhood remove from ocean vortex the minute particulars wipe oil off a gull’s wing refreeze the ice caps child let your blossoming lustful age begin as summer fire as a spirit easily drawn to vengeance disobedience and riot
Of Autobiography
my dear dead friend should I tell of the animals who never sleep of the break down of the body how it branches out leaves gaps and gnaw marks how in delirium how in the four walled twilight I searched for your house outside the city should I tell of the garden where I am buried in a text of nowhere and tangled thoughts how migrant birds in their joyful placeless sky beat away our fleshless music with their wings should I tell how disintegration is a body of illegible words scratched in the margins with a stick my dear friend shall we live nowhere shall we not care how things turn out
Of History
history is an argument I used to decorate my body with abstract designs knowledge is simply too fragile to scoop and transfer if this is paint it proves I can think symbolically I am a human interested in other humans I carve out tens of thousands of years with a stick curled up bodies exposed beneath a dry clump of dirt there is no privacy so very close to death I tell you over three hundred species of beetles are eaten as food in our mouths hard wings soft wings and pupae like words rupturing easily just before singing
Barbara Tomash is the author of five books of poetry including, most recently, Her Scant State (Apogee), PRE- (Black Radish), and Arboreal (Apogee); and two chapbooks, Of Residue (Drop Leaf Press), and A Woman Reflected (palabrosa). Her writing has been a finalist for The Dorset Prize, the Colorado Prize, The Test Site Poetry Prize, and the Black Box Poetry Prize. She lives in Berkeley, California, and teaches in the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University.